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FathersForJustice

Crime wave: a Fathers 4 Justice campaigner dressed as Batman on a balcony of Buckingham Palace in 2004

King cone: Matt O'Connor believes ice cream to be

There aren't many ice cream makers who quote Voltaire and Mary Wollstonecraft. Who long to take an ice cream van to Gaza and serve scoops to the Israelis and the Palestinians as a peace initiative.

But then Matt O'Connor - founder of Covent Garden parlour The Icecreamists, the man who has just won a battle with Westminster Council to carry on serving his "Baby Gaga" breast milk ice cream - isn't your average foodie. He prefers to see himself as an ice cream revolutionary.

Blogging about the politics of breast milk on his website, he insists it's "pure, organic, free-range and totally natural", and far more ethical than drinking bovine milk destined for the calves of other mammals.

The morning we meet at his Gothic black and pink ice parlour on Maiden Lane, he's just heard that Westminster's health protection agency, which confiscated all supplies for the breast milk ice cream, has grudgingly admitted it's safe for human consumption.

"They didn't find any nuclear waste, any chemical bio-hazard," he tells me gleefully. "They came in here a bit mob-handed like inspectors in Iraq looking for weapons of mass destruction."

The battle isn't over yet. Pop star Lady Gaga last week began legal proceedings against Icecreamists claiming that the £14 dessert is "nausea-inducing" and "intended to take advantage of [her] reputation and goodwill".

If she wins, it could bankrupt him. O'Connor is unrepentant. "For Lady Gaga to accuse us of stealing her image is laughable when you consider how much she has borrowed from popular culture to create her look and music ... So she's trying to censor us."

O'Connor, 44, with his trademark Flock of Seagulls hair and wild specs, may look like a children's comedian. But he is determined to push the boundaries of flavour. The breast milk wasn't a one-off stunt. He's made ice cream with absinthe, bread and roses. His three-course Sundae Lunch featured pea, beef and horseradish.

Back in 2009 the Sex Pistols threatened legal action when he launched "God Save the Cream" (inspired by their 1977 single, God Save The Queen) containing herbal Viagra-like stimulants.

He claims to be "genuinely shell-shocked" that the breast milk story went around the world. But is O'Connor protesting just a little too much? In his previous incarnation he founded campaigning group Fathers4Justice, which became famous for high-profile stunts such as dressing up as Batman and Superman and scaling cranes and buildings, or flour-bombing the Prime Minister in pursuit of "fathers' rights".

O'Connor organised every protest and was arrested 12 times but took an active part in only one. He stormed York Minster dressed as a priest in a stunt he called In the Name of the Father and ended up being invited to speak from the pulpit.

Love or hate F4J, it put the issue of fathers' rights on the map (Bob Geldof was an early fan).

Critics argued that its actions demeaned dads and damaged the cause. But F4J also changed the nature of protest, showing how the right image in the right place could dominate the news.

O'Connor confides that Plane Stupid contacted him early on for advice. And he loves the fact they teach Fathers4 Justice on the National Curriculum.

However, two years ago, O'Connor closed down F4J - after a father who had phoned O'Connor for advice days earlier killed himself and his children in a car on Father's Day. "Emotionally and physically it had destroyed me. There's only so many deaths, suicides, misery any one person can deal with."

He was also tired of being followed by Scotland Yard, which considered him a "domestic extremist". "They threatened me and my family which I took very seriously." He won't elaborate - except to say he was told he was a greater threat to this country than Osama bin Laden.

Since then he's reinvented himself as the king of ice cream, first opening a concession at Selfridges, then his own stand-alone parlour in 2009 selling boutique ice creams and "cryogenic cocktails". It's a Prohibition-style speakeasy with waitresses dressed as uniformed cops. On the wall is the Voltaire quote: "Ice cream is exquisite - what a pity it isn't illegal."

But for all the punning titles - Obamama flavour, Molotoffee Cocktail - most agree that O'Connor makes great ice cream. He spent time in Italy studying flavour theory at Bologna's Carigiani Gelato University. He talks lovingly of the provenance of the ingredients - Madagascan vanilla pods, Ecuadorean dark chocolate, Italian crema with balsamic vinegar. His chef is Mark Broadbent (ex-Bluebird) and he works with mixologist Alex Kammerling of Grey Goose.

Ice cream wasn't such an unusual choice for O'Connor. As a designer he's been working on confectionery projects for 20 years - he helped Unilever launch Viennetta and Magnum and designed the packaging for Loseley ice cream.

Even at the height of running F4J, he was working on hush-hush launches. As a freelance creative director he was responsible for the banned 2009 ice cream advert (for Antonio Federici Gelato Italiano ice cream) suggesting a kiss between a priest and a nun.

The name for the Icecreamists came to him when he was hauled in yet again by the police. "I told them 'I never killed anybody, I never threatened anybody. We were just overweight guys in Lycra. That's our only crime.' I told them 'I'm not an extremist, I'm an Icecreamist!'"

He loves ice cream because it's "a universal socialising agent". He reminds me that in Belarus young people defied a ban on political demonstrations by assembling ... to eat ice cream.

O'Connor does his research. Before he put breast milk ice cream on the menu he ran the idea past the "yummy mummies" of Covent Garden (they loved it). Milk was screened at a private clinic to the same exacting standards as blood and milk bank donors. And the woman who donated the initial breastmilk for the icecream, Victoria Hiley, 25, teaches new mothers to breastfeed. "We needed someone legitimate and articulate."

Despite the anti-female reputation of F4J, O'Connor is clearly attracted to strong women: his second wife Nadine is a feminist. He married his first wife Sophie, who is Spanish, when he was 27, and had two sons with her. He accepts now that he was "an arse". He drank. He womanised. Sometimes he wasn't home for days.

Sophie asked for a divorce and sought, via the courts, to cut his contact with their sons to a minimum. It was his annus horribilis. His business partner died in an accident, then the banks foreclosed and took away the company flat. He was homeless, living in a friend's camper van.

One night on Waterloo bridge with a bottle of Jack Daniel's, he considered suicide. Only the thought of his young sons held him back.He stopped drinking and began rebuilding his career. By 2002 he had £50,000 in the bank - and used it to set up F4J. His accountant thought he had gone mad. "My poor mother genuinely thought about sectioning me."

Ironically by that time he was on amicable terms with Sophie again, and granted unregulated access to his sons, but he wanted to make a larger point about the role of fathers in society. "I wanted to make injustice visible."

He met Nadine - "an amazing woman" - when she was involved in her own custody battle over her daughter, Philippa. She came along to a F4J meeting to hear the other side.

Today they live with Philippa, 11, and their son, Archie, five. O'Connor's two teenage sons, Daniel, 15, and Alexander, 13, stay over regularly. He revels in domesticity. "I've grown up."

And F4J is back up and running again - with Nadine in charge. "For me it's unfinished business that needs to be resolved." There will be no men in tights this time. Instead it will be "children-focused".

It's not mothers who inspired his wrath, but the "secrecy and cruelty" of the family courts. He wants the law changed so equal parenting is presumed, whereas at present the pendulum swings with the mother. "All we want is equality between the genders, equality of treatment."

He's met the present Government and calls them "professional politicians with no life experience". He says it's the most anti-family government so far. "Look at the tax system. My wife and I would be £600 a month better off living apart."

In between it all he has written an autobiography and Harbour Pictures (Calendar Girls) has bought the film rights. He designs his own range of jewellery and has just recorded a F4J song.And he's got two more body-fluid inspired ices coming out this summer, which should rile the "food fascists".

Entrepreneur by day, provocateur by night. You feel for Nadine, whose job it is to keep him grounded. "I need to be tethered to terra firm," he beams. "Or I float off."